Be With (2001)

Eiko & Koma's collaboration with cellist Joan Jeanrenaud and the dancer-choreographer Anna Halprin. Performed at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC (premiere), at the Yerba Buena Center for the Performing Arts in San Francisco and at the Joyce Theater in New York.

Eiko & Koma have known and admired Anna Halprin from their earliest years in America. Over the twenty-five years of their acquaintance, they have come to revere her as a mentor. However, mentoring is not restrictive; learning is not imitative. The new work dealt with the emotions and energies that eddy and swirl around such a relationship as it evolves into the maturity and seniority of the participants.

Eiko wrote elsewhere about Anna Halprin: “Her passion is contagious. She is responsible for our understanding how movement is art without necessarily being inside a theater or in a museum and how dancing belongs to every being.”

Joan Jeanrenaud, for 20 years a cellist with the Kronos Quartet, composed a music for acoustic cello, and performed live at all performances. Lighting was by Eiko & Koma's long time collaborator Patti Ann Farrell.